The Point of No Return

There is a state beyond jumping the shark, a wicked and vicious state few have achieved. A terrible state, one showing no going back. They have become a monster of a franchise. No quality drop will be below them, they have already bottomed out in quality. Death does not follow the franchise into the grave, rather, a living death lingers on their very souls. A limbo of empty moneymaking, seeking money that no longer exists.

Has Sonic achieved this narakrap? We will ask that question later. First, let's take a look at franchises that certainly have achieved this. All three were once moderately popular PC game franchises, but fell down worse and worse over time. Now they do appeal to only the lowest common denominator. The first of three disgraces is Backyard Sports. I have already discussed this franchise once. I wrote how it was utterly razed by corporate greed. It turns out they made a new mobile dump of it. Let's take a look...

FUCKFUCKFUCK Not this crap again!

Aaand, we get more shit that will only appeal to fuckwhocares. This is just a dull sellout along the lines of Candy Crush Saga (which I'm on the borderline of not even considering a videogame). Typical app crap. They didn't even change the designs back! They still look tweenish! The characters looking like cute kids with little bead eyes was part of the appeal!

And what the fuck happened to most of the Backyard Kids, anyway? Those who haven't been fuckshitted beyond fucking recognition have just fucking dissipated into fucking oblivion for fucking YEARS. 11 FUCKING CHARACTERS ARE GONE. And some fucking lame new fucking characters don't fucking change fucking anything.

The next is Petz. You know, those dumb as shit games you see in the bargain bins at your average department store next to the ones based on preschool shows and foodstuffs? THEY USED TO BE GOOD.

Really. The original PC incarnations were an innovative series of Pet simulators based around uniquely designed and coded 3D characters. The series's mod scene created many extra breeds. Some of these breeds are very wild and specialized, like Eeveelutions.  But then 2006 rolled around, and we got a major console release of Petz, and it ripped off Nintendogs. From then on, they would either copy Nintendogs to the letter or make some bizarre premise no one cares about.



Now they're on level with Imagine.

Last is Army Men. Thankfully, this franchise seems to have been laid to rest at last in 2010. But before that, we got a bunch of increasingly worse spins on the series after Air Combat. But the final nail was Soldiers of Misfortune:

In Name Only

Has Sonic succumbed to the fate of these three with RoL? You be the judge.